Really.

I was watching @discover.ca, a daily 1 hour science program on the Discovery Channel in Canada, tonight with Smudge doing her lap fungus, or in her case leg warmer, routine. There had been a lot of bird sounds coming through for some reason but not much else, then they got into an article about whether temperate or tropical birds are generally more colorful. Apparently this was a serious article as two different groups of scientists were going around trying to figure this out and coming to different conclusions (they did agree that most birds in both areas qualify as drab).

There were some really good pictures of really very colorful birds moving around and making sounds. I guess Smudge opened an eye and saw them because the next thing I know she is standing on my shins very still eyeing the program. After a moment she moved very carefully over under the TV and sat there staring up at it very intently. After she had been sitting there a minute or two the article ended and they went to commercial and there she is staring intently at the screen waiting for the delic.. ER pretty birds to come back. She continued staring for about a couple of minutes more and then she started looking around the room as if to locate the cause of the disappearance, and at one point she stared at me and the nearby channel changer as if I had callously changed the channel on her program.

Then she jumped up onto the platform of the scratching post, which is located very near the front of the TV, and looks at the screen and looks behind it. They are not there. Next she starts that odd mouth smelling routing that cats do that leaves their face looking wonderfully twisted and humorous. There is no odor of those wonderful birds. Now she stares right at me. I had done nothing but she is not convinced and convicts me of having scared off HER birds. She got down off the platform and goes to the chair furthest in the room and curls up and ignores me.

I wonder how long the sentence is?

Copyright © Larry Osborne
March 15, 2001

The sentence ended at noon today.

To give her a treat or to get myself another sentence I switched over to the noon rerun of the program that caused the problem. She got interested when the birds came back on, although she didn't go all the way to the television to watch closely this time. When it was over, she came over for a petting then went desultory (amazing how a cat can convey so how its feeling so well by its movement) over to the dry food picked out a few bits and ate them wandered down the hall for a minute then came back to take over my lap (well knees and shins) again.

Copyright © Larry Osborne
March 16, 2001